Guest Towel with Crochet Applique

2025.015

Guest Towel with Crochet Applique

Thompson, Charles Etta Dunlap

probably 1940s or1950s

Towel: 19 inches x 36 inches
Basket: 16 inches tall, 5 1/4 inches across lower edge; and 13 1/2 inches across widest part of handle, excluding the bow

Charles Etta Dunlap Thompson (1898-1958) lived in Texas most of her life. During the Great Depression, her husband C. T. Thompson left their home near Proctor, to look for work in West Texas. She followed him later, with the youngest four or five of their seven children—the older children were already grown and out in the world. The family resided for a while in Rotan, Texas, before settling in Sweetwater for the rest of Charles Etta’s life.

Those first few years in West Texas were difficult, and Charles Etta’s youngest child Alan (1935-2018) recalled his mother picking cotton to make money. He particularly remembered when, as a toddler, he sat on the tail-end of a long cotton sack with his slightly older sister Sue. The other end of the sack was constructed in a way to sling across their mother’s shoulder. She dragged them behind her, between the rows of cotton plants, as she stuffed the long bag with the cotton she harvested.

After a day’s work was done, Charles Etta crocheted or did other needlework in the evenings. One of her projects was this orange guest towel, embellished with a crocheted green basket and six crocheted flowers of cream, yellow, lavender, pale blue, and pink. The flowers were trimmed with one round of dark green crochet. The thread was probably No. 10 crochet cotton.

From the early 2000s to at least 2025, the towel was displayed in Alan and his wife Anna’s home. It was by chance that their daughter learned the crochet-embellished towel was the work of her grandmother.

In 2025, a search using the term “flower basket towels” on freevintagecrochet.com returned a few patterns similar, but not exactly like, the pattern used for the towel Charles Etta made.

Suzann Thompson